Optimising workforce and energy costs by exploiting production flexibility

In a world where the electricity prices become more and more volatile, notably due to renewable energies, the industry is suffering from cost variations never seen before, especially when electro-intensive. Nevertheless, the plants can significantly reduce this impact: some electro-intensive factories could shift their production to time periods where the electricity is cheaper, resulting in large savings. At the same time, the grid operator can remunerate this consumption adaptation as a flexibility service.

Our research goal is to optimise the operations of a factory around this flexibility. We compute a production plan that adapts to price forecasts, but also flexibility levers that adjust this plan to react to unexpected price changes. We propose the unifying concept of reservoir to provide sufficiently good models for the plant's processes.

Nevertheless, this methodology implies to have frequent production plan changes, which directly impacts the workers, as they may be asked to follow barely predictable schedules. This has a significant detrimental effect on their quality of life. As a consequence, the human aspect of flexibility must also be considered: we seek for production plans that consider both workforce and energy costs, and we then assign workers to work shifts while ensuring their well-being. This HR orientation is the most innovative contribution of this research project.